


though it's the end of the world

by piggy09



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-18
Updated: 2017-06-18
Packaged: 2018-11-15 12:35:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11231103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: SPOILERS FOR EPISODE 2 OF SEASON 5Oh. She’s dead. Years and years of careful preparation, clockwork habits, meticulous planning for the possibility of an ending – wasted, gone. Veera is dead. Out in a blaze of glory.You should have seen me, Niki,she thinks.I gave Sarah time. You’d like her. She’s one of our sisters, and she’s braver than any of us. Except maybe you.And then she remembers Niki is right there, looking at her with a soft fondness Veera doesn’t understand. “I’m sorry,” Veera says. “I went away.”





	though it's the end of the world

**Author's Note:**

> I just banged this out because I'm not going to be able to sleep until I at least begin to process this. I have run out of words. God, she deserved better.
> 
> [warnings: reference to that violent catastrophe this episode]

MK wakes up and Niki is there and she is lying on the ground and nothing hurts and Niki is there and she can breathe, and Niki is there, and Niki is hugging her. MK is sitting up now, Niki is hugging her. Niki has her hair in braids. Niki smells like cheap floral lotion and Veera hasn’t smelled that in fifteen years. Her arms are around Niki’s neck before she can question it – think about the hows and whys and wheres, the way she always does when it’s her alone in the dark. Niki makes her mind go blissfully quiet. Niki – _made_ her mind go blissfully quiet, that was always Veera’s favorite part of her.

That’s a lie. Veera had so many favorite parts of her. One of them is the fact that Niki is sighing _shh, shh, shh_ into her hair, because she knows that Veera is startled. She always knows. Knew. Knows.

“I failed,” Veera says.

“What?” Niki says, leaning back and smiling. “Come on, Veera, no you didn’t!”

“You don’t even know what I failed at,” Veera says. She stands up. They are in a field – Niki is lying on the ground in a field, and Veera is standing up in a field. Correction: grass lawn. Niki’s tree house in a nearby tree. Veera remembers it bigger, but maybe that’s just because she was younger the last time she saw it.

“Veera,” Niki says, “calm down, okay? You’re fine. You’re safe. We’re all safe here.”

“I died,” Veera says, voice small.

“Maybe a little bit,” Niki says, and Veera whirls around and falls on her knees in front of her. She reaches out to clasp Niki’s hands, thinks better of it, takes her hands back.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to shout. I didn’t—” Her eyes are blurring, watery with tears. “ _Niki_ ,” she says helplessly.

“Hey,” Niki says; she reaches out and grabs Veera’s hands, because she was always the better of the two of them. “And it’s totally okay, you should have seen Justyna when she got here.”

Veera’s heart kicks once against her ribs; she drops Niki’s hands, puts a hand to her chest. It doesn’t feel like a symptom of anything, but perhaps she should take some—

Oh, that doesn’t matter. She’s dead. Years and years of careful preparation, clockwork habits, meticulous planning for the possibility of an ending – wasted, gone. She’s dead. Out in a blaze of glory. _You should have seen me, Niki,_ she thinks. _I gave Sarah time. You’d like her. She’s one of our sisters, and she’s braver than any of us. Except maybe you_.

And then she remembers Niki is right there, looking at her with a soft fondness Veera doesn’t understand. “I’m sorry,” Veera says. “I went away.”

“I’m glad you’re back, though,” Niki says. “I missed you, like, a lot? A lot.”

“Justyna is here,” Veera says as her mind catches up.

“Yeah!” Niki says. “Her and me and Sofia and Fay and Femke and Jade. We all sort of got here at the same time, and when we realized you weren’t here…” she fiddles with the end of one of her blonde braids. “I mean, we were worried, but we knew you’d get here eventually.” She catches some deep guilt in Veera’s face and wrinkles her nose up in a smile. “Hey, don’t worry,” she says. “It didn’t hurt.”

“I know it hurt,” Veera says quietly. “I saw it. I tried to fix it, Niki. I wanted to make him pay for what he did to you. But he—” She closes her eyes and Ferdinand’s face is on the back of her eyelids, panting like a dog in heat. _Rachel, Rachel, Rachel_ and if MK had known she could have gone through Rachel instead, she could have manipulated him more seamlessly or maybe faked a phone call from Rachel and lured him into a safer—

“Veera,” Niki says, and Veera wakes up again. “It’s okay,” Niki says. “It hurt, alright? It hurt, but that was a _long_ time ago.”

“So long,” Veera whispers. “Niki, I missed you.”

“I missed you too,” Niki says. Veera, on long-buried instinct, reaches to fiddle with her hoodie strings and finds that she is wearing her hoodie. Her perfect hoodie, the one she lost years ago; the exact right softness, the drawstrings just the right length. She ties them in a knot and unties them again. “Your hair changed back,” Niki says, and Veera reaches up to find it brown and scruffy again.

“The other way was cool,” Niki says.

“No it wasn’t.”

Niki laughs, delightedly. “Yeah it was!” she says. “I am the authority on cool, you can trust me.”

“I do,” Veera says. They both go quiet again. Somewhere in the distance a bird is trilling – a harsh, rattling song, probably a lesser whitethroat. _Sylvia curruca_. None of the grass spikes uncomfortably under Veera’s hands. It’s the perfect temperature. The sky has precisely six clouds, and none of them look like anything.

“You wanna come see everyone?” Niki says. “They missed you.”

“I,” Veera says, and starts crying again. She puts her head in her hands. Her lungs don’t hurt, and Niki is sitting here, and the sky was cloudy when she – when it happened; the data’s overwhelming, none of it lines up, she’s dead. She can breathe. Her brain is still racing to find a way to help Sarah and Kira, but that doesn’t matter, because she’s dead.

Niki’s hand rubs circles on her back. “I keep thinking it was for nothing,” Veera says. She splays her hands over her face and looks through the gaps in her fingers. “I died and it wasn’t for anything.”

“It doesn’t have to be for anything,” Niki says. “You were brave for a long time, Veera. You earned the chance to sleep, y’know?”

“You don’t know that,” Veera says.

“I know you,” Niki says. “I know that when we were, like, _terrified_ , you stood up and you told us what to do. Are you gonna tell me that you just, like, sat down and never fought back again? Sorry, Veera, I wouldn’t believe you.”

“I gave Sarah time,” Veera says. “Sarah Manning. British. Outside of the system, the way that I – I went outside of the system, after. Except Sarah was born outside of it, completely outside of their control—” (god, she is going too fast) “—and there is hope in her, Niki, to put an end to all of this. She can free all of our sisters. The ones who are still alive. She can save them. I gave her time, she can run now.” She swallows, even though her mouth isn’t dry. “I wanted to do more,” she says.

“That’s you,” Niki says. “Never think it’s enough, huh.” She smiles. “It’s enough, Veera.”

“Is it?”

“Uh-huh.” Niki is so young. She is the color of the sunlight and Veera forgot how utterly young she was. She feels, suddenly, ancient; her teenage body doesn’t fit her anymore. She slips back into the person that she is now. Her hair falls, scraggly and black, back around her face. Niki reaches up and tucks some of it behind her ear.

“But seriously,” she says, soft and kind, “Jade’s gonna kill me if I don’t bring you by. She looks, like, _so_ pretty with her hair all grown back, seriously, you can’t even imagine.”

“Let’s go,” Veera says – quick, before she can change her mind, before she can think of one more thing she has to do. “I want to see – everyone, Niki, I missed you all so much. I burned candles for you. I promise that I did.”

Niki stands up; there’s no dust on her jeans, there’s nothing to brush off. Behind her the sun makes a halo but she doesn’t need one. Veera’s best and only friend. She never needed anything to light her up at all.

She holds out a hand. “Come on,” she says. “It’s time to go.”

“I know,” Veera says. She reaches up and she takes Niki’s hand.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you, I'll say goodbye now  
> Though its the end of the world, don't blame yourself  
> And if its true, I will surround you and give life to a world  
> That's our own  
> \--"Goodbye to a World," Porter Robinson
> 
> ...which has always been my MK death song, but I thought I'd have a better occasion to use it than...this. Anyways. Thanks for reading; please kudos + comment if you enjoyed. <3


End file.
